Spring 2 2019

95.01%

County average - 96%

Phonics

Phonics and Early Reading

At Suffield Park Infant and Nursery school we want our children’s first experiences of reading to be both pleasurable and memorable whilst teaching them the necessary skills to access their early education. Children in Reception and Year One have daily phonic sessions and these are continued into Year 2. The scheme we follow is ‘Letters and Sounds,’ which is a systematic programme for teaching phonics knowledge and skills. We teach children to recognise individual sounds in words, to blend phonemes into words and to segment phonemes to aid early spelling. Teaching activities are fun and engaging and often involve practical games and ICT links. A link to the programme can be found here: http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ . You can also see our teachers modelling the correct pronunciation of each sound on Tapestry (our online journal for YR).

Children are giving daily opportunities for reading which may be whole class, individual reading or guided reading. A range of texts which include fiction, non-fiction and poetry are shared with the children. We hugely value parental support with reading and ask that you read with you child for a few minutes each day. Children are rewarded in their classes for reading outside of school. We run regular reading cafes where we share books and reading skills with parents and carers. Our newsletter will tell you when the next reading café is scheduled for your child’s class.

Our new library and dedicated book areas within classrooms give children the opportunity to choose books that they can read independently or share with you at home. We encourage use of our local library in Cromer and invite children to complete the annual Summer Reading Challenge.

The Oxford Owl website https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/ has lots of free resources to support reading at home including a free eBook library for 3-11 year olds.

If you have any questions about how best to engage your child in reading at home please contact your child’s class teacher.